Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

On the 22nd June 2024 I ran the Hadleigh parkrun which was the 319th event held at the venue, my 189th parkrun and 111th different course I'd attended. Hadleigh has been my nearest parkrun event that I hadn't done yet for a while. Partly because I'd been saving it for a time when I needed to be back home early but mainly because of it's reputation. The course description kind of gives it away when it says that the park was used for the Olympic Mountain Bike events in 2012.  Yup, it was going to be a hilly one! In the week leading up to parkrun day (formerly known as Saturday) I had managed to find a convenient excuse to wimp out. I'd been suffering from a rotten cold all week, so much so that I took Friday afternoon off of work just to try and get some extra rest. I'd heard plenty of previous advise about running with a sore chest and how you should avoid it. But with the number of last minute changes of plans so far this year I've been keen to keep to a sc...

On the 15th June 2024 I ran the University of Northampton parkrun which was the 42nd event held at the venue, my 188th parkrun and 110th different course I'd attended. This weekend was a rare one. A weekend without football tournaments, Gillingham games or anything else planned. It was also a weekend without Foordy choosing which parkrun we did next so the world was my oyster. With a new car added to the family after too long I decided to answer that age old question, 'how far is too far to travel just for a 5k run?' In reviewing my options for this weekend there were three events all hosting their 42nd event. 42 is one of those early parkrun numbers that I've not ran at yet, and if you've been paying attention you'll know that'll be missing from my Wilson Index.  The three events in question were Wisbech, Wolford Wood and the University of Northampton, all with fairly comparable travel times (just under two hours) Which feels like a long way to travel just...

On the 8th June 2024 I ran the Lloyd parkrun which was the 658th event held at the venue, my 187th parkrun and 109th different course I'd attended. There was no blog post last week as I repeated a fairly recent event. I headed back to Thames Path, Woolwich with both Andrews and had another great run on what is a wonderfully quirky course. I also managed to set a new event PB and was also 4 seconds shy of a new parkrun PB (again!) This week was just another one of those weeks where planning evolved, decisions got made and got changed all over again. At one point we were heading to Bushy park, home of parkrun. But Foordy was travelling during the week and couldn't stomach another part rotation of the M25 so we set ourselves up for Maldon Prom over in Essex for what looks to be an enjoyable event with some lovely estuary views. But I woke up to a text message on Saturday morning from Foordy who had made himself unavailable for the morning. With Hayden at a football tournament in ...